ALCS Blog: Why Mike Ilitch covets a World Series title

Mike Ilitch, the billionaire Little Caesars pizza mogul, has spent more than $1.4 billion on player salaries since buying the Detroit Tigers from rival pizza baron Tom Monaghan in 1992.

Since 2005, he's steadily boosted payroll spending, paying for a roster of stars far beyond what a mid-market team such as Detroit normally would sustain.

Part of that is because he wants to win his first World Series championship to accompany the four Stanley Cups his Red Wings have won since he and wife Marian bought the hockey team for $8 million in 1982.

Two other factors came into play to aid that hefty spending: Little Caesars had rebounded and increased its revenues after a rough patch, and the 2004-05 NHL lockout resulted in a salary cap. That payroll limitation saw the Wings player spending drop by $38.3 million. Ilitch had a $77.8 million Wings payroll in 2003, and a $39.5 million roster in 2005.

The difference in Ilitch's reduced spending didn't go into savings. It was shifted to the Tigers.

In 2003, the Tigers had baseball's 24th-highest payroll, at $49.1 million - which bought Ilitch an American League record for awfulness thanks to a 43-119 season. In 2004, it was 23rd-best at $46.2 million. That team improved to 72-90.

Executive personnel moves accompanied the cash outlays: In addition to hiring team president and dealmaker Dave Dombrowski in 2002, he hired manager Jim Leyland in 2006, and the team appeared in the World Series for the first time since 1984 - the first year of Monaghan's ownership after he had bought the team from broadcast executive John Fetzer for $53 million.

That surprise 2006 World Series squad began the year with an $82.6 million payroll. The subsequent addition of elite players and elite salary requirements has driven Ilitch into $100 million-plus annual player spending every year since 2008.

Since 2006, Ilitch has spent $775 million on salaries, or 55 percent of his total player spending over 20 seasons of ownership. That's reflective of the financial willingness to pay for a championship roster and the inflation of baseball salaries that began in earnest in the late 1990s.

The desire for a return on his investment isn't 84-year-old Mike Ilitch's only reason for seeking a championship. He was a professional baseball player from Detroit - and not a bad one.

In 1952, the 23-year-old Detroit native was fresh off a four-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps and working to establish a baseball career, toiling as a young infielder in the far reaches of the minor leagues. That year, he signed a $5,000 deal to play for the Jamestown Falcons, a Detroit Tigers rookie-level affiliate in western New York. He split time that year with the Cotton States League's Hot Springs Bathers in Arkansas.

By 1955, Ilitch's baseball career had taken him to seven teams in seven cities. A leg injury — along with the responsibilities of being a new husband — forced him out of the game.

He appeared in 336 games during his four seasons in the minors, during which he was a career .280 hitter. His best full season was 1953 with the Tampa Smokers of the Florida International League, where Ilitch, who played second base, appeared in 115 games and was second on the team, with a .310 batting average.

Here's a look at his minor-league career, courtesy of my research last year via baseball-reference.com and the Society for American Baseball Research: